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Asked by Jo to Christie on 20 Jun 2016.
Question: Why do you think anybody hasn't promoted mitochondrial reasearch etc before on a large scale?
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Christie Waddington answered on 20 Jun 2016:
Mitochondrial Disease is classified as a rare disease, although 1:4000 adults suffer with mitochondrial disease (which is about the same as cystic fibrosis). What makes it hard to research is that each mitochondrial disease is not the same, and more than one organ is affected. We can predict which organs will be affected based on their mutation and from other patients with the same disease. For doctors, this makes it hard to diagnose as the symptoms of mitochondrial disease are similar to lots of other diseases.
Researching mitochondria is also quite difficult because it has its own membrane and getting drugs and things across the cell membrane and across the mitochondrial membrane is tricky chemically!
As a centre we have been trying to promote mitochondrial research. In 2014-2015, we were in all the papers and on all the news channels because we had campaigned and won to get a change in the law to allow for a new IVF technique called mitochondrial donation (links to a few of the articles are below!). This did raise our profile quite a lot, but I do think that the public are still quite scared of scientists as they think its all really complicated and difficult to understand. I’ve been teaching in schools, and have even done an art exhibition to try and get the public talking to us about science and realising that its not so scary! I’m a Scientist will help too, and we’ve got lots more public engagement stuff planned to hopefully make mitochondrial disease as well-known as cystic fibrosis or cancer!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31594856
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/news/2016/06/safetyandefficacyevidenceformitodonation/
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